Wednesday, November 10, 2010

It's All Good, If You Let It Be What It Is

    I had a busy day ahead of me last Thursday beginning with an early morning meeting with a mother whose son was going to be suspended and ending with a late night of music and a full day in between. The moment my feet hit the floor I was off and running and then I wasn’t. My normally smooth ride to work came to a grinding halt.
  I was one of a string of early morning commuters on the steep curving on ramp to I20 that came to an abrupt stop in the rain. We didn’t slow down. We stopped. No one was moving period.  It was a little like being stuck on top of a Ferris wheel. None of us were going anywhere soon but the view was pretty if you took the time to notice it.  Five minutes passed, then ten. I called work, texted the teacher next to me so she would open up my classroom and then put on Red Haired Boy by Rani Arbo and Daisy Mayhem. It has some great licks I’ve been trying to learn and I wasn’t going anywhere.
   Twenty minutes passed, I shut the truck off and sat with the window rolled down and watched the rain. Then it hit me, I wasn’t waiting, I wasn’t impatient. I just was. I was calm and peaceful. I was going to be late for my meeting and a math test wasn’t going to get copied but it didn’t matter. They were what would be and this was now and now was the only moment I had. It’s the only moment we ever have but we don’t always take it. We live with one foot in what used to be and one foot in what could be, (but probably won’t be, truth be told,).  I don’t know about you but that generally makes me a little nuts. Ok, a lot nuts, which is why I try to take life one moment at a time, and believe me, try is the operative word in that sentence.  
  Thirty minutes passed when an SUV pulled up along the side of the road and stopped. A young man got out in the rain and started walking up the road. It struck me as a little odd, but what do I know; nothing about him, that much for sure.  I said a quick prayer for his safety and sat, just sat, sat and let peace wash over me.  Ten minutes later traffic started to move again, albeit, at a snail’s pace but moving none the less. I got about a hundred yards down the road when I saw the young man from the SUV walking back to his car. He wasn’t alone. He held the hands of two very young children leaning over them to shield them with his body.  He had a long day ahead of him, mine was nothing in comparison.
   I was late for my meeting, my math test did not get copied and it was all good. It’s always all good if I let it be what it is.